As with the crafting grid, a player may repair items by combining two similar items. With the anvil, however, the target will keep its enchantments, and may gain new ones from the sacrificed item.

Alternatively, a player can use materials originally required in the crafting of the item (iron ingots for iron items with durability, diamonds for diamond items with durability) to repair a single item. One material can only repair 25% of the target's maximum durability.

In addition, the player can rename any item - not just items with durability - by using an anvil.

Repairing with materials works for the most part, but not with all items: As a rule of thumb, repairing works for items with their material in the default name. For example an anvil can repair an iron pickaxe with materials (iron in this case) while an anvil cannot repair bows or shears with any materials. As a special case, chain armor can be repaired with iron ingots and elytra can be repaired with phantom membranes. The repair does not need to be complete; one material will only repair 1⁄4 of the item's maximum durability.

Repairing with a matching item works for any item with durability including bows, shears and so on. The items must match in type. For example a golden pickaxe cannot combine with an iron one.

Note that in both cases the resulting durability will be limited to the item's maximum, and there is no discount for "over-repair".

As a subset of repairing one item with another, the anvil can transfer enchantments from the sacrifice to the target. This can have a synergistic effect when both items share identical enchantments, or simply add to each other when they do not. Two Sharpness II swords can be combined to make a Sharpness III sword, for example, or a pickaxe with Efficiency can be combined with one that has Unbreaking. This can produce enchantments and combinations that could not be made by using an enchanting table. But even so, some enchantments cannot be combined if they are similar, or contradicting, in terms of what they do. If the target is damaged, you will pay for the repair as well as the transfer.

Transferring high-level enchantments is more expensive, and renaming an item has an additional surcharge. The anvil has a limit of 39 levels, beyond which it will refuse to repair altogether. This limit is not present in Creative mode.

Any item or stack of items can be renamed at a cost of one level plus any prior-work penalty. If the player is only renaming, the maximum total cost is 39 levels. The maximum length for renaming is 30 characters. Some items have special effects when renamed:

When there are air blocks below anvils, they will fall, in the same way sand, gravel, concrete powder and dragon eggs do. A placed anvil cannot be pushed or pulled by pistons,[Java and Legacy Console editions only] but a falling anvil can. This is different in Bedrock Edition where anvils can be pushed and pulled by pistons. Anvils will make a metallic clanging sound when they land.

When anvils land on a non-solid block, they destroy the non-solid block rather than dropping as an item, unlike gravel or sand. When an anvil is dropped on pressure plates, boats, cobwebs, slabs, signs, cakes, lily pads, opened fence gates, or closed trapdoors that do not have a block beneath them, the anvil will drop itself as an item. When dropped on a mob head, the mob head will become the item form.

When anvils fall on a player or mob, it will damage them. The damage amount depends on fall distance: 2 () per block fallen after the first (e.g., an anvil that falls 4 blocks will deal 6 () damage). The damage is capped at 40 ( × 20), no matter how far the anvil falls. Wearing a helmet will reduce the damage by 1⁄4, but this will cost durability on the helmet. When a player dies by an anvil falling on them, the chat will display the message: "Player was squashed by a falling anvil." However if a player is merely touched by an anvil entity, or falling anvil, no damage will result until the falling anvil becomes a solid anvil-block in the airspace where the player is located. Falling anvils can be manipulated by TNT cannons, and will pass right through a mob or player without damaging them.

With each use, an anvil has a 12% chance to become damaged – degrading one stage at a time, first becoming chipped, then damaged, then eventually destroyed. On average, an anvil will survive for 25 uses, which is approximately one use per 1.24 iron ingots used in crafting the anvil.

An anvil can be damaged and destroyed from falling as well: if it falls from a height greater than 1 block, the chance of degrading by one stage is 5% × the number of blocks fallen.

The damage stage does not affect the anvil's function, but only anvils of the same damage state will stack in inventory.

In the Legacy Console Edition, damaged anvils that are broken using a pickaxe then placed again are completely repaired. This is due to the fact that damaged and very damaged anvils do not exist as items.[Legacy Console Edition only]

Properties: Optional. The block states of the block, listed as key-value pairs under this tag.

Time: The number of ticks the entity has existed. If set to 0, the moment it ticks to 1, it will vanish if the block at its location has a different ID than the entity's TileID. If the block at its location has the same ID as its TileID when Time ticks from 0 to 1, the block will instead be deleted, and the entity will continue to fall, having overwritten it. When Time goes above 600, or above 100 while the block is below Y=0, the entity is deleted.

DropItem: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the block should drop as an item when it breaks. Any block that doesn't have an item form with the same ID as the block won't drop even if this is set.

HurtEntities: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the block should hurt entities it falls on.

FallHurtMax: The maximum number of hitpoints of damage to inflict on entities that intersect this falling_block. For vanilla falling_block, always 40 ( × 20).

FallHurtAmount: Multiplied by the FallDistance to calculate the amount of damage to inflict. For vanilla falling_block, always 2.

It is now possible to repair tools, by using more of the material it is made of. (Such as adding diamonds to a nearly broken diamond pickaxe). Renamed item names appear as italic text now. # Levels was changed to Enchantment cost.

Anvils no longer allow enchanted books to apply to items, if no change in enchantments would take effect. This can occur if all enchantments on the book are incompatible with existing enchantments on the item – or if the enchanted book has no enchantments.

If you rename a material, such as diamonds, it will not stack with unnamed or differently-named items.

For unenchanted items, "unit repair" can easily cost more material than just crafting a new item or combining damaged items. The exception is armor, where you can use less material at the cost of experience levels.

If placed on top of exploding TNT blocks, the explosion won't affect the surrounding area.

This is because the Anvil falls into the space the TNT entity is occupying, and since the TNT's explosion power is not high enough to destroy the anvil, no blocks are destroyed.

Anvils are also commonly used as a guillotine because of its ability to kill mobs/players as a controlled entity.

If an anvil is placed on top of a chest, you are still able to open the chest.

In other languages

Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.Minecraft content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of Mojang and its licensors. All rights reserved.
This site is a part of Curse, Inc. and is not affiliated with Mojang.